Jared Leto On The Joker In 'Suicide Squad': Violence Is A Symphony

Joey Esposito is a writer and hoarder of things from New England, living in Los Angeles with his wife Amanda and their cat Reebo. He thinks

Stories about Jared Leto's commitment to his role as the Joker in David Ayer's Suicide Squad are abundant, but the actor recently sat down with EW to discuss just how deep in it he was.

On top of sending his cast mates eerie and demented gifts, Leto said he spent quite a bit of time with the criminally insane:

"To the Joker, violence is a symphony. This is someone who gets an extreme reward from the act of violence and manipulation. Those are the songs he sings and he is very in tune with what makes people tick. I did meet with people that were experts, doctors, psychiatrists that dealt with psychopaths and people who had committed horrendous crimes, and then I spent some time with those people themselves, people who have been institutionalized for great periods of time. I guess when you take on a role, any role, you become part detective, part writer, and for me that’s my favorite time of the entire process, the discovering, the uncovering, and the building of a character."

The Oscar winner added:

"I think the Joker lives in between reality and another plane. Kind of a shaman in a way. It’s a very intoxicating role to take on. You have permission to break rules and to challenge yourself and anyone around you in a really unique way.

"I first started at the beginning, educating myself, researching, reading as much as I could, going back to the source material. And then at a certain point, I knew I had to stop doing that. Because the Joker has been redefined, reinvented many times before. I think the fun thing about it is when people have done it in the past, there is some spirit of the Joker essence that they keep, but they either build upon something or tear something down and start again at the beginning. For me, I knew once I had gone through the process of educating myself, I had to throw everything away and start from the beginning and really build this from the ground up. It was a transformative process. There was a physical transformation. There was a physical conditioning."

The actor also acknowledged the thespians who have played the character before him, saying:

"The work that’s been done on this character by so many people before me has been so impactful, so incredible, so much fun, so profound, so risky, that it’s a very special thing to be asked to take on that responsibility."

No doubt it will be difficult for anyone to live up to Heath Ledger's Joker, but it's easy to forget that everyone said the same thing about Ledger following Jack Nicholson.

By all accounts, Leto's Joker is a very different take on the character that will feel fresh when Suicide Squad enters theaters on August 5.